Wednesday, October 10, 2012

A Few Thoughts: Father and Sons

Jonas:

I shower at night, after the boys are asleep. Barbara showers in the morning, after the boys are up. Jonas asked Barbara the other day, "Mom, why do moms take showers but dads don't?" This is an honest question based purely on this boy's life experience. To him, the world goes to sleep at 8pm. I mean, what interesting thing could possibly happen while Jonas Gitzel is asleep?

Jonas has a small Batman tattoo on his arm that he got from a birthday party. It's almost rubbed off now so he coloured it in with a few markers. Today, while on the bus, Jonas looked over from his seat to notice an old man looking over at him. Jonas proceeded to roll up his sleeve and show off his cool red and green coloured Batman tattoo to the man. In fact, 2 days ago he did the same thing in the elevator for an old lady.

Remember when you were young and cheap little things like tattoos and bubble gum were so cool you thought that everyone around you would be jealous? That's Jonas' world right now.

Miles:

Miles runs everywhere. When we are going to school he runs ahead to predetermined "pitstops" that I have pointed out so that he does not run all the way to school without us. One time, at one of the stops, Miles was breathing very hard, and curiously he asked, 'Dad, why am I breathing like this?" I told him it was because he just finished running 100 meters. At that moment he realized that, every time he breathes hard like this, it is not that there is something wrong with him, it is that it is a product of running. Ever since then I've noticed that, when he's tired, he is much more calm about it. I realized that, for quite some time, he didn't know why he couldn't just run forever and it seemed to really bug him.

Miles figured out that he is a human being.

Brett:

My problem with the NHL lockout is that, while they talk about who gets the money, nobody gets the money. I don't get it. I read today that there were some more meetings this week between the two sides, yet the conclusion was that they remain far apart and the entire season might be lost. You know what that means? These guys lose approximately 3 billion dollars by not working something out.

Can we mere mortals fathom a billion dollars? Can we imagine being in meetings discussing 3 billions dollars and how to split it up, then leaving the meeting with our hands raised with a, "Well, let's talk about this again in the next week or two."? These guys should have one of those giant digital counters drilled to the wall in the meeting room. The counter just keeps ticking up and up, minute by minute, the amount of money they are throwing away every single day. How much has it been so far? One report figure that the league has lost over 200 million dollars already. That clock would just keep ticking up and up.

Now, if you have a job and your job is to make a deal with someone, and every week you don't have a deal in place you lose over 100 million dollars, would you not think that taking a "break from talks" would be more than silly? To me, this whole thing is psychotic. If, in the end, the owners end up winning and get a bigger chunk of the money, then someone still needs to answer that age-old question:

When you already have a billion dollar income, why risk losing it just to get 1.5 billion dollars? In other words (and I have trouble understanding because I don't make money) what can you buy with a whole lot of money that you couldn't already buy with a whole lot of money?